Microsoft's multicultural missteps
Company offends foreign countries with software gaffes
- Jo Best, Cnet News.com
Monday, August 23, 2004

Microsoft's lack of multicultural savvy cost the Redmond, Wash., behemoth millions of dollars, according to a company executive.

The software giant has seen its products banned in some of the biggest markets on earth -- and it's all because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a dodgy choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.

Speaking at the International Geographical Union congress in Glasgow last week, Microsoft's top man in its geopolitical strategy team, Tom Edwards, revealed how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a political faux pas.

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200, 000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try to heal the diplomatic wounds.

"It cost millions," Edwards said.

Another blunder from Microsoft involved the use of chanting of the Quran as a soundtrack for a computer game, which was roundly denounced by the government of Saudi Arabia.The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, keeping the previous editions in circulation because Microsoft's U.S. staff thought this wouldn't be spotted. But the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. Microsoft then withdrew the game.

The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.

Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish- language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Edwards said that staff members are now sent to geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.

Microsoft spokesman Ricardo Adame added, "It is complex to do business globally and in multicultural environments. Like any large company, we have made mistakes, and this is to show that we have definitely learned from the past."

Chronicle staff writer Matthew Yi contributed to this report.